Kyn Review

Kyn is an incredibly flawed, but interesting game that no one asked for. Is Kyn as good as Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin?

Kyn is an Indie cRPG developed by Tangrin. Tangrin’s goal was to develop a fun, high quality game that would immerse us the world of Kyn and while it does fall short of it’s goal it’s still a pretty decent game to play for the asking price.

The Great:

Gameplay:

Kyn has really awesome gameplay. I didn’t expect to be sucked into this game the way I was when I started playing it, but before I realized that it was 2am I was beating the shit out of skeletons, and ugly ass goblin looking things. During battle you can slow up time by pressing the space-bar so you can give your party commands. Kyn does not have a deep combat system, but it works and once you get the hang of it it’s pretty good. It won’t compete with other games in it’s genre, but that didn’t stop me from having some fun with the game.

Soundtrack:

The soundtrack in Kyn is nothing short of amazing. Every tune that played in the background fit the atmosphere perfectly. I never thought that a track was out of place or boring. I think a soundtrack can make or break a game and it’s done incredibly well here. The other sounds in the game aren’t that great. Hitting an enemy doesn’t sound meaty like should and everyone makes weird grunting noises when they’re fighting, but it gets the job done since this game was made by two people and some contractors.

The Good:

Graphics:

Kyn is a pretty good looking game. It doesn’t compete with games like Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin, but it doesn’t need to. The environments are nice and varied. You’ll go from fighting skeletons in grassy plains to fighting more skeletons in icy villages. There are a bunch of muddy textures in many areas of the game and nothing that I saw really popped out at me or made me stop to enjoy the view like I do in many games. I won’t be posting screenshots of Kyn up for your enjoyment because I don’t think the game looks as good as other games in it’s genre.

Skill Tree:

The way you unlock skills in Kyn is by investing a certain amount of skill points that you earn after every quest you complete. If you want a good warrior based skill you’ll have to invest a lot of points in your body. Your body stat also determines how much health your characters will have. I really enjoyed the skill system, but I really hated it too. You can only map two skills to your characters. There were so many skills for me to choose from that I never had a chance to use because of the lack of hotkeys available to me.

The Bad:

Animations:

The animations in Kyn are laughably bad. I couldn’t sit down and play for more than an hour or to at a time because of how stiff everything is. Everyone swings their swords the exact same way, and it takes forever to fire my bow. By the time I had a shot lined up my other characters would have already killed the guy I had my archer trying to kill.

Story:

A great RPG knows how to tell a good story. Some RPGs don’t need a strong story because of how great the gameplay is, but Kyn isn’t particularly strong in any area. It’s fun to play, but it doesn’t stack up well when compared to any other RPG in it’s genre. A good or even decent story would have made it so much better than what it is. I never cared about Alrik, or Bram. I could care less about what was happening to the villages or why the goblin dudes were slaughtering everyone around us.

Replay Value:

There is no replayability here. After I completed Kyn I uninstalled it because I have no intention of ever playing it again. There’s nothing to come back to once you’ve finished the main game and what it offers just isn’t enough to justify putting off other games in my backlog.

The Verdict:

Kyn is a decent game that shouldn’t exist. With games like Divinity: Original Sin, and Pillars of Eternity there really isn’t a need for me to recommend this game over those. If you’re looking for a great cRPG with a rich story, good characters, and a ton of replay value get something else. You won’t find that here, but I can’t say that I didn’t have some fun with Kyn and that is what saved this game from getting a negative score with me in the end.

6/10

Don’t forget to click on that Follow Us button for the latest sports, games, movies, and more.